scrubbing soaping washing healing

The first time I prayed I was somewhere else

my roots have always been far away so finding my body was expensive

though, when I was little, prayer came easy.

It’s just what we would do together, I could look at the floor, 

look at all the different feet and feel certain I wasn’t alone

I used to have true clarity of thought, maybe because I believed everyone was basically the same

We got convinced that being together is even harder than being alone,

so we make up stories about how connected we are, fashion Others from our minds and scrub them into our eyes like soap until we can’t see our own feet on the ground.

We run out of ourselves,

Then we run out of Others.

We get bored.

So, eyes still stinging,

we fly somewhere remote looking for more souls,

for the kind of strangers we won't see again

we touch their faces, get in their personal space like children putting their hands on the tv screen. 

think - maybe if I get close enough I’ll remember what it felt like to touch a person

Trying to reinvent futuristic feet instead of scrubbing the blood off the ones we already had.

instead of wading into the sediment left from years spent scrubbing each other out

We’re busy and important.

On weekends we pinch ourselves to make sure someone’s still there,

counting seconds between distractions,

waiting for hands to land on us

m'shghoula

my father flew like a spore

blown, strewn across the ocean

sometimes people who talk about finding their roots forget the ocean 

my mother had sails, an anchor and she followed him here

i couldn't breathe

so i tied the rope from her sails to my waist

i dove, swam until there was no more water, then there was earth

i shoveled, burrowed until there was clay,

it got hotter and before my rope burned up and i turned to stone

I dug myself up and out

then there was almost air, i could smell it

the sun hit my nose

i poured the sand from my lungs.

breathing again, i slept on the beach

when i woke up, a man was there:

"How about a swim?"

Ramadan Verse 2016

let commitment be more forceful than any one weakened body
let discomfort help us to feel worthy, to feel heavily human, not rushed or burdened
let hunger be a bow, fasting an arrow, the day a chance to be more kind, more patient, more gentle,
more discerning than any struggle convinced us was possible